


Interim

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Flings, Foreplay, Getting to Know Each Other, Sexual Tension, Uncertainty, but still mostly strangers, prejudices and assumptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 14:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10788342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: "They would surely die within the next few months, anyway. Nobody was making long-term plans."Numa and Kallus on Yavin IV. Numa worries about her own judgment, but not that much.





	Interim

**Author's Note:**

> This story is rated M for sexual situations, but that might be over-selling it a bit. Put it somewhere between T and M.

_The sun crept under the wide eaves of the Massassi temple. Filtered through the jungle, it didn’t bite into her eyes the way it would have on Ryloth. And it hadn’t properly risen yet, and her first shift didn’t begin for two hours, and the bed was still comfortable with the warmth of her—lover? Yes, she supposed that was right. He did have duties this morning, and he hadn’t been gone ten minutes._  
  
_Thousands of years ago, someone had built these temples on a colossal scale, designed them to make a visitor’s head swim. Even though rebel forces were converging on Yavin IV at an alarming rate, crew quarters in these edifices remained spacious. A little chilly in the morning though. Numa drew the covers back over her head and tried to piece through her thoughts._

 

…

 

They were all going to die, anyway—that was one thing to remember. The Empire released new weaponry every day. Parts of Ryloth had fallen and the rest would crumble soon. They couldn’t survive without the support of the larger Rebellion, and the Rebel Alliance didn’t have time or resources to liberate planets one by one. The Free Ryloth movement would have to join the larger cause—get training and weapons, and provide support in return. Hope that they could put enough pressure on the Empire to free everywhere at once.  

Numa and several others had been sent to Yavin IV to make this impossible Kessel Run of a plan happen.

She hadn’t made it out of the hangar yet, hadn’t even slung her duffle off her shoulder, when she saw him. And yes, he caught her eye. But only because he was staring at her with…such an expression. Curiosity and shame both. She’d never seen the man before in her life, so he must have come here carrying his own baggage. But there was something else in that look, too. As if he'd seen a person where he expected none.

 

…

 

_He wrapped his hand over her shoulder, then ran it down her arm, fingers ghosting across her wrist. She shivered.  He told her: “You. Are tiny.” He was almost laughing at her, but not quite, his eyes still filled with that careful admiration of first time lovers._

_She scoffed, a particularly Twi’lek tone._

_He touched a lek with his fingertips and she told him, “All is right. You can be more rough than that.”_

_She didn’t have to tell him twice._

 

…

 

With so many people wandering around, she hadn’t expected to see him again outside of the hangar bay. But her first morning on base, he strode into the training room with an arrogance both off-putting and genuinely commanding, and she realized that he was their instructor. She thought, “What does this human man have to teach me?” Quite a bit apparently: weapons, Imperial procedures, Imperial technology, even Imperial codes. A double agent then—or maybe a traitor. Commander Kallus, he introduced himself. She didn’t catch the first name.

He and a few others donned Stormtrooper armor to show them the weak points, but this she already knew. He took one look at her and pulled his punch, so she drove her plastoid knuckle guard under his chin.

He jumped up much faster than she’d expected. Less than a minute later he’d pinned her to the ground, but she noted with satisfaction that he was still wheezing.

“Excuse me—” He trotted after her at the end of the session. “Hey—” Then he straightened and cleared his throat and became uncomfortably formal and Core Worlds. “I’m sorry for shouting at you. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Numa.”

The corner of his mouth quirked, she thought at her accent, but she couldn’t read the emotion that smile signaled. He tapped her shoulder guard. “This is real Republic armor, isn’t it? The old type, before they started using the new alloy.”

She nodded.

“Where did you get it?”

“Ryloth.”

He waited for a moment, but she volunteered nothing further. So he cleared his throat again. “Apologies—where are my manners? I’m Kallus.”

“Yes, I know.”

He seemed off-balance, uncertain of how to take her reticence. But in a larger sense, he also held himself with the assurance of one who has always known that the galaxy is working in his favor, and that didn’t exactly put her at ease.

 

…

 

_He fiddled with her head scarf afterwards, their legs tangled comfortably together. “What is this?”_

_“Hmm?” She peeked without raising her head from the pillow. “It is a map to a place that no longer exists.”_

_“That sounds quaint.”_

_“Not really. It was bombed last month. Before that, I led supply trains through the canyons. There were landslides often, and the Empire could keep no official maps. So I carried one in my scarf.”_

_“Ingenious.”_

_“Basic strategy.”_

_“Codes and espionage is your area, then?”_

_“Mmm… Some infiltration. Weapons. Audacity.”_

 

…

 

Her third day on base, she saw him stripped to the waist while he sparred with Garazeb Orrelios, and that was honestly what made her inquire. “Who is he?” she asked Bridger.

“Oh, he’s our ex-nemesis and new secret informant,” the boy laughed. “Although… I guess now he’s an ex-secret informant, too.”

“Pardon?”

So he told her the story, Kallus standing prisoner on the bridge of a Star Destroyer and needling the command crew, jumping into an escape pod and assuming they would pick him up, climbing aboard the Ghost with his face bruised and his eye misshapen and saying “thank you.” And then of course he’d refused to leave the first time they tried to extract him, because Grand Admiral Thrawn was too formidable an enemy to be left unwatched.

Something in that bravery spoke to her. All of them here were brave, foolhardy, desperate, but he—he had thought of how to take the game, even if it meant sacrificing the houjix. She appreciated strategy. She liked a soldier.

And then for all the arrogance in his voice, she caught that look in his eyes whenever he was observing rather than speaking. As if he had spent a lifetime in certainty, and now had to re-map all of his touch points. She didn’t know that feeling herself, but it spoke well of him.

 

…

 

So she fooled around, just a little. An accidental brush of the hip and then a look too saucy to be missed as she apologized. A quick, rough kiss against his cheekbone when he followed her, teeth and tongue on the side of his face, stretching up to the very points of her toes to reach. And then a few indiscretions in the odd dark corner, a minute here and a minute there, never leaving him with the promise of anything more.

One day she asked Hera Syndulla during a maintenance shift, asked her straight-out without bothering to explore her own motivations: “Do you think if I slept with a human I’d be…I don’t know…a traitor?”

Hera turned eyes on her, obviously offended, but said only, “You mean a race-traitor? Is that what you’re asking me?”

Embarrassed, Numa shrugged her assent. Cham’s ideas weren’t always his daughter’s, she remembered too late. And her own ideas could use examining from time to time. Ryloth for Twi’leks. An end to slavery. An end to exploitation. Ryloth first. She hadn’t spent enough time off-world to temper the assumptions that came with those beliefs.

“Well—” Hera tightened a bolt a little too hard, but otherwise spoke conversationally, “—you’re asking _me_ , so I guess we already know what answer you want to hear.”

“I don’t mean anything long term, anything that would distract me from the movement. Only…”

“You want to know if Kallus is safe. Is that it?” Hera asked.

She nodded.

“He’s not.”

“Is that your good judgment speaking or your habit of treating him as the enemy?”

“Both.” Hera sighed and put down the wrench. She was two years older, but she’d always been more balanced, less hot-tempered. Less likely to rush headlong into bad ideas. “I’m not going to tell you not to sleep with a human, and I’m not going to tell you not to have your fun. And I think he might be the genuine item. He’s had no reason to help us other than his own convictions, and he wasn’t just risking his life playing a game—he was prepared to sacrifice himself. Ezra told you about the call he sent us, right? We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

“But.”

“But. A long time before that, I watched him beat my friend to the ground and prepare to kill him. And…I saw something in his face. He was enjoying himself.”

“Hera, we’ve all gotten caught up in a firefight.”

“This wasn’t a firefight though, and it wasn’t adrenaline.”

“Cruelty, then.”

“I think so.” Hera shook herself and turned to the next bolt. “But who am I to say people can’t change?”

“Hmm.”

“Numa?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re looking for a fling with a human, the base is full of them.”

“Yes. But…this one has QUITE a lot of hair.”

Hera didn’t laugh.

 

…

 

_Numa saw that look herself for two seconds, as his palm caressed her throat. It was gone by the time he got to the shoulder. And then he was stroking her collarbone, and she wouldn’t have noticed any look he might give._

_Later, when she pushed him back insistently with just the tips of her fingers, she saw it again. Yes, maybe it was a cruel satisfaction. She stuck her chin in the air in that imperious way that made men either want to subdue her or obey her, and he gave her a cat-like grin in return. He’d known she’d be like this—that’s what his smile said. He’d pursued this side of her._

_He’d decided to be hers when she hit him in the throat._

_Right now he was enjoying her power, but in five minutes he might want to turn the tables. This need to fight for dominance—she didn’t know whether he intended to burn this trait from existence or carefully curate it in hiding._

_Then his fingers trailed down her stomach and she didn’t care._

 

…

 

More troops joined them daily. Rebel cells converged on Yavin IV, which made it a very, very dangerous place to be. Something was coming, they could all feel it. One final push that wasn’t likely to end in victory.

With the arrivals came a few dozen children, the offspring of freedom fighters who had nowhere else to go, or refugees snatched from some Imperial machine the moment before it chewed them up. Children living on borrowed time as much as any of them, in other words.

Kallus found General Madine and threw a fit. “This is poor strategy. With them here, you’ll never give up the base to save your fleet. You might as well go to ground and wait for the Empire to bombard you into oblivion. If you think for a moment that they won’t exploit any weakness—”

“Then we would be more foolish than we are,” the general cut him off. “You weren’t around the last time we searched for a base. Quite frankly, we have nowhere else to send them.”

Kallus had stormed away furious.

“You underestimate them,” Numa chided him. “They are real children, not stuffed tookas to dress and play with and set in a corner. They will take their chances—as will we.” Sometimes it was difficult to find the phrases she needed in Basic, to explain that the smaller you were, the more resourceful you learned to be. “They may outlive us,” she settled.

“Oh, I’m certain they will,” he groused. “Because they are a liability!”

But she found him a few days later playing monster with them, running his fingers through hair and sideburns to stand them on end and then chasing the children while they scattered, all fierce roars and mad eyes.

“Come and catch me!” said one. “Come and catch me!” And then, “Nah nah nah nah,” the little boy stuck his fingers in his ears and taunted.

So Kallus made a lunge at the group. Laughing, screaming, the tallest girl flung her hands out and shouted, “Force push!” He fell back on the ground, convulsing dramatically. They gathered over him giggling, a small army of ferals. “Get up! Come on, get up! Chase us some more!”

He caught sight of Numa laughing at him and extracted himself from clinging limbs—no easy feat—to trot over to her, just as he had after that first practice session. Disobedient, the children trailed him, pulling at his arms. “Come on, play more!”

“These monster rules are too difficult,” he told her. “Chase me, don’t chase me. Attack me, no, not really, stop. Be mean, no don’t be too frightening. I don’t recall monster games having so many rules.”

“Oh?” she raised an eyebrow.

“I’m having a monster existential crisis.”

“Of course you are,” she told him coolly—another of those phrases that came out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about the consequences.

“Are—are you angry with me?” he asked.

 

…

 

Eight weeks of training in Alliance-wide procedures and Imperial tactics, and then back to Ryloth for one last assault. Nothing about this stay was ever going to end well. But that was all right—they would surely die within the next few months anyway. Nobody was making long-term plans.

Mornings after he’d risen, Numa laid in Kallus’s bed and soaked up the warmth.

**Works inspired by this one:**

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